186 FLY FISHING FOE TROUT. 



general standard so high that a writer of Sir 

 Humphry Davy's eminence, had he lived after 

 him, would have been slow to encumber his book 

 with such artless productions. From hence- 

 forth the engraver keeps pace with the writer. 



But Ronalds started another stream also, the 

 angler-naturalist : in this his influence acted 

 more perhaps by permeating all writers than 

 by inspiring individual books. Still there were 

 such. Chalk Stream Studies owes much to 

 him. Kingsley indeed could have written a 

 great book for the angler-naturalist. And 

 Hamilton's River -Side Naturalist, too, is a 

 book which might be better known than it is. 



Of one of the latest of the books describing 

 the natural fly, Halford's Dry Fly Entomology , 

 something has been said already. Its author, 

 a distinguished and devoted fisherman, gave 

 much time and work to the book; and he was 

 helped by his friends. The scheme of the book 

 is in advance of Ronalds, as may be imagined, 

 seeing the strides entomology had made. It 

 attempted to give a life history of the better 

 known insects in all their stages, from egg to 

 imago. I will only here say two things about 

 it : first that it should be read in its revised 

 and improved form, not in the original book 

 of 1897, but in the reissue in 1913 in the Dry 

 Fly Man's Handbook. Secondly that though 

 it contains much for which the fisherman is 

 grateful, he is still impatiently expecting some- 

 thing more : something which really shall give 



